Subject: Re: [lojban] Reviews

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2000 11:41:15 -0400

At 05:02 AM 04/18/2000 -0400, pc wrote:
>A reference for the review and mentioned would still be handy.
>
>Loglan got some thoroughly mixed reviews in the late70's- early 80's (i.e.,
>for a language barely visibly related to either TLI's or LLG's current
>offerings) by Zwicky in Language, I think.

1968. John Cowan answered this, we think effectively, with the article now 
at http:/www.lojban.org/why-lojban/reply.txt Cowan's article has the 
reference.

> And, of course, the NSF proposals
>got very bad reviews (though not generally for their linguistics) throughout
>the 80's.

pc is feeling young, I guess. The NSF proposals were torn apart in the 70s.

Generally the criticisms fell into 3 categories. 1) NSF shouldn't be 
funding linguistics research involving artificial languages not matter 
what, 2) the proposals were too vague (which they were - the scientific 
content was minimal because JCB expected people to read the material 
mentioned in the next point) and 3) that JCB had included thousands of 
pages of supplementary material that the reviewers did not necessarily see 
(because he wasn't supposed to rely on such material like complete copies 
of L1 and all issues of The Loglanist) and which were too much to read.

The first proposal was either marked as outstanding or as awful. Later 
proposals, where the recipients did not get the supplementary material were 
generally responded to with a "what's this about?"

lojbab
----
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)